Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Employee Junk Drawer

Everyone on your team can be and should be strategic to your organizational objectives. Period.

After meeting with a few of our key people and members of our Client Experience Team (they're much more important than simply calling them "admin"), I'm finding schedules and activities full of good, well meaning stuff but missing the mark strategically in their roles.

5 quick things:

Much of the stuff on your to be delegated to someone else list should simply go away. Don't push your garbage to someone else on your team.

Make sure everyone on your team understands the answers to these 3 questions:

1. What is our organization trying to accomplish?

2. What are the top 3 components of my role that best moves our organization to its goals?

3. What's on my plate now that doesn't have any effect on these top 3 components?

Most people on your team will need help in knowing what to stop doing and pruning their activities. Schedule a meeting with your team members to review their top 10 tasks and bring out the hatchet.

Sometimes the boss or owner is the biggest problem. People tend to "drop everything" when the owner speaks, your managers/owners may need some coaching on how they communicate their needs. (Yep, tread carefully...)

Good employees are artists at keeping (or looking) busy.Pull the plug, chop the list, and refocus the bullseye.

The Employee Junk Drawer: Busy activities that seem to be important, often delegated by others, but simply cause drag to your organization.